By Daman Jeet, co-founder of FunnelKit, a suite of sales tools that helps over 18,000+ businesses streamline their checkout process.
Are you wondering if your business could benefit from a “coming soon” page? If so, you’re likely not alone.
This marketing tool can make it easy to educate your audience, grow your lead list and connect with people who might find value in your product or service.
As the name implies, a coming soon page gives users a teaser of things you and your team are working on. If someone is genuinely interested in a new product or service, they can subscribe via your sign-up form so they can stay up to date.
Through my company’s work providing sales tools to e-commerce businesses, I’ve found that the mistake many marketers make is assuming they don’t need a coming soon page once their site is live. The truth is, this type of landing page can be helpful regardless of your industry or how long you’ve been in business.
Below are four situations when a coming soon page can help your business.
1. You’re launching a brand new website.
The most common instance when a coming soon page would come in handy is when you’re launching a brand new website. I’ve seen that many business leaders create a standalone landing page while they prepare the rest of their site for the public.
Use this opportunity to invite visitors to join your email list so they can receive updates along the way. You can even incentivize users further by giving early subscribers an exclusive coupon on launch day.
When developing a coming soon page in this situation, it’s important to give visitors enough information to care about your website. Avoid generalized statements, and instead focus on addressing your target audience’s goals, pain points and needs.
2. You’re expanding your product catalog.
You can also use a coming soon page to promote a new product or service.
For example, let’s say you’re the owner of an email marketing software-as-a-service solution, but, recently, you chose to dive in and tackle social media marketing. You decide you want to keep your first site email-specific, so you create a new brand and website for your social media marketing software. Instead of hoping visitors will stumble across your site, you can add a coming soon page so existing visitors will know your new product is in the works.
The key to maximizing early conversions with this strategy is to give users time to sign up and anticipate your product. A coming soon page that’s only up for a week won’t get much traction. Meanwhile, people will completely forget about your brand if you leave a coming soon page up for six months.
As a general rule of thumb, I suggest promoting your landing page for one to three months before launch.
3. You’re in the process of rebranding.
Rebranding is the process of changing details about your company, such as the logo, products or color scheme. There are plenty of reasons why a company might want to rebrand. Common causes include the following:
• Modernizing the company to meet today’s socioeconomic standards
• Separating the company from a sea of competitors
• Expanding market reach (similar to creating a new product)
• Creating distance between negative associations
Some rebrands don’t change much, such as Apple dropping the word “computers” from its name in 2007. But other rebrands are a bit more drastic. Consider Starbucks, for instance, which dropped its entire name from its logo and stuck with the iconic siren.
Regardless of the size of your company, you shouldn’t change from one brand to the next overnight. Consider creating a coming soon page to connect with users and let them know what changes are coming in the future. Keeping your audience informed will prevent them from panicking when they see a shiny new logo on your site the next time they visit.
4. You’re building interest in other marketing platforms.
Finally, coming soon pages can help you build interest around other marketing platforms. For instance, if you’re a new business owner and setting up your email list for the first time, you should create a coming soon page so users know what’s in store for them if they sign up.
You can use this strategy for growing social media channels, too. Let’s say you want to start a group on LinkedIn, but you want to build a community around the idea first. Including a landing page that explains what you hope to achieve with a community can help your message resonate with users.
Some business owners use this strategy to promote upcoming partnerships. Coming soon pages are extremely beneficial in this context because it links your company to another reputable brand, which acts as social proof.
Back To You
As you can see, there are plenty of instances when a coming soon page can assist business leaders and marketers. The most important thing to remember is these pages are designed to appeal to your audience. Whether you’re rebranding, offering a new product or starting a new website, users want to know how interacting with your brand will help them reach their goals, and a coming soon page can help.